The threat to close Columb Barracks could be the last straw for Mullingar, which, locals tell KATHY SHERIDAN, is becoming the Bermuda Triangle of business
WILLIE PENROSE didn't bother with a silencer at a charged meeting of army wives and supporters in Mullingar last Monday. The closure of Columb Barracks, said the local TD and Minister of State, would be "crass stupidity and economic lunacy . . . I have no intentions of supporting stupiddecisions."
It sounded like a line in the sand. It had to be, if Penrose is to retain any credibility. Two years ago he warned that the people of Mullingar and wider Co Westmeath would fight any planned closure “tooth and nail, and if you are contemplating such a move, let me tell you now and advise you for free: forget it, as we will not allow it to happen in any shape or form . . . We won’t allow the barracks to close in any term, either short, medium or long.”
Then again, the history of army-barracks closures is criss-crossed with lines in the sand. Albert Reynolds said more than a decade ago that Connolly Barracks, in Longford, would close over his dead body. The final convoy departed in January 2009.
But for Penrose the threat to Columb Barracks carries a definite whiff of high noon. He has said the barracks is “part of me, part of our DNA”, and he is an honorary member of One, the organisation for ex-servicemen.
“He is traditional Labour to his bones, and he’s genuinely not an ambitious person,” says a source close to him. “This is not political cuteness. He’d be fierce stubborn. He’s not likely to resile from a position once he takes it. He’d walk away.”
Reared in a local-authority house in rural Co Westmeath, Penrose joined the Labour Party at the age of 13; he will mark 42 years of membership next Saturday. This is not a good time to test a traditional Labour man; the proposal to sell off part of the ESB is known to be particularly galling to him. He has also been fighting a serious illness, which makes him even less likely to suffer fools.
THERE IS A palpable sense, too, that Mullingar is fighting for its survival. Again and again, townspeople point out that despite, being labelled a “gateway town”, Mullingar’s lifeblood has been draining away towards neighbours blessed with political champions such as Brian Cowen and Mary O’Rourke. After 55 years, the district veterinary office has just been whisked away to Tullamore.
“All the health services have been shifted to Tullamore, too, and all the education services to Athlone, which in turn has spawned Elan and other companies,” says councillor Mick Dollard. Mullingar has been compared to a Bermuda Triangle of business.
“The IDA has made 35 visits to Athlone, three to Mullingar,” says Pat Whelan, president of Mullingar’s Chamber of Commerce.
“We have a fabulous bypass, but we’re being bypassed full stop,” says Angela Maher, who was reared in Columb Barracks, the daughter of a sergeant major.
Business people say the barracks is worth about €8 million a year to the town, a figure reached by computing the average wages of 200 barracks personnel, as well as significant spending from ancillary training activities in the State’s last artillery barracks.
“It can accommodate 300 personnel at an hour’s notice. It’s one of the biggest training areas for the RDF [Reserve Defence Forces, formerly the FCA], and we get a huge number of those into the place,” says Des Walsh, a local businessman. “It’s also used as a gathering point for units going to serve abroad. It’s one of the few rifle ranges left in the country. The Garda special branch uses it for weapons training. The rapid-response unit and the special branch were brought here for special arms training before the visits of the queen and Obama.” In fact, it was used as a transit camp for hundreds of troops during those visits.
Given that no jobs will be lost, but relocated to Costume Barracks, in Athlone, no one is putting a figure on any immediate financial impact to the town, beyond losses to service garages, supermarkets and licensed premises. But it is the medium- and long-term implications that are of most concern as 182 soldiers and 13 civilians slowly but inevitably decamp to Athlone with their families, taking with them all those pay packets, future pension pots, volunteerism, youth and a proud 200-year-old tradition.
It makes no sense at any level, says Robert Archbold, a retired company quartermaster sergeant. “Say if you have 300 personnel, 250 of them married with an average of three kids. That’s 750 kids gone from the local schools. Imagine the knock-on effect of that, for the schools, for the swimming pool, for the tennis club. You’re taking children out of school, teenagers away from their friends: for what?”
ARMY WIVES ARE equally baffled. Breda O’Callaghan, whose husband is serving overseas, and Kate Madden, another army wife, says young soldiers are already “hanging on by their fingernails” after the pay cuts and levies, with some of them in receipt of the family income supplement. O’Callaghan, a mild- mannered woman whose husband has reached the noncommissioned-officer pay ceiling, says his take-home pay has dropped from “€800-odd a month to €700. Some soldiers are overseas to pay off mortgage arrears, so they’re spending six months away from their families and coming home with nothing but the money to keep the roof over their heads for another little while.”
Many bought overpriced houses during the boom so may not be able to sell. “And now they’re asking them to pay to run a car up and down to Athlone,” says Madden. “Disturbance money would last nine months. It’s basically petrol money. What happens then?”
The only public-transport link between Mullingar and Athlone is a bus that arrives in Athlone at 9am. “What use is that to a soldier who has to be on the square at half-eight?” asks Rebecca O’Callaghan, Breda’s daughter.
Might a special army bus be laid on? “For two lads who are on 24-hour duty on a Sunday? How likely is that?”
“And what’s it all for?” asks Breda again. “They won’t even have enough room for them in Athlone. They haven’t enough room for the soldiers from Longford as it is. Add 200 from here, another 140 from Cavan and all the equipment: where are they going to fit?”
There is indignation that Enda
Kenny would compare Castlebar Barracks, a lowly RDF outlier, by all accounts, to Columb, the last artillery barracks in the State, with its 200-year history, listed buildings and role as exemplar of loyalty to the State in challenging times.
Amid this week’s emotional atmosphere, people were reminded of how Mullingar resisted “severe intimidation” to close their businesses and fly black flags to mark the passing funeral cortege of an H-block hunger striker, a decision perceived as an expression of the town’s loyalty to the state and the Defence Forces.
“And, believe you me, the dissident threat is not over,” says Archbold. “Just look at what happened this week: people from all over the country arrested with mortar tubes.”
In Archbold’s view, it makes no sense to close Columb given Mullingar’s strategic location. “It would take less than 30 minutes from here to cut off the whole country from Kinnegad. In the Troubles, the first roadblock went up in Kinnegad.”
For Angela Maher, the immediate fallout for the defence forces will be a drop in RDF numbers. “Who’s going to get in their car two nights a week and drive that distance to Athlone?” She also believes the real agenda is “about downsizing our army in the short-term for money”.
OPPONENTS OF THE MOVE insist even this makes no sense. The upgrading of the barracks has continued apace in recent years, with a revamped gym, kitchen, accommodation and superb communications system. In the past weeks, internal roads have been resurfaced.
“This has nothing to do with savings,” says Mick Dollard. “It will cost money to close it. The projected savings on one side are €362,000. On the other, we’re given no indication of costs for security or energy if the site is mothballed. Our projections are that it could cost €3 million over a few years.”
According to the Department of Defence, it is envisaged that the closure will save €570,000, “including utilities, maintenance and security duty”. Archbold estimates the cost of security patrols for the barracks, with its six-hectare land bank, could reach €700,000 a year.
He should be so lucky, if Kildare’s Magee Barracks, vacated in 1998, is any guide. No money has been spent on permanent security patrols of Magee, according to the local Fine Gael councillor, Tony O’Donnell. The department says, “there is no dedicated security” at any of the abandoned barracks but says, “The barracks have been secured to a high standard.”
However, O’Donnell says that, over the years, Magee has become a byword for substance abuse, vandalism, neglect, arson, animal abuse and ongoing thievery by people who seem to have no difficulty gaining access, armed with working tools. It has been looted and stripped of its fine fittings, brass, copper and lead. Even the manhole covers have been stolen.
When O’Donnell requested the services of military police to secure it, he was informed it had been “civilianised” and by implication was no business of the Department of Defence. Yet this summer army units from the Curragh carried out exercises on the site involving gunfire, to the alarm of neighbouring residents. In recent weeks, trenches were dug on the site and copper cable removed with the aid of a vehicle and a jackhammer.
Magee Barracks, says O’Donnell, “is the best example of the worst way it can play out: it fell between two stools”. There was no plan for the site before its closure. Occupied for a couple of years by refugees from Kosovo, it was then earmarked for an ambitious affordable-housing scheme. According to O’Donnell, the county council conducted full consultations and adopted the plan, only for the Department of Defence to reject it as economically unviable. When the final plan for 1,000 units was adopted, after laborious consultation, it had outlived the boom.
The department says it “had been involved in the process of transferring ownership to Kildare County Council and a final contract of sale was sent to the solicitors for the council in 2009. However, the local authority subsequently contacted the department to state that it no longer wished to proceed with the development and had no interest in taking possession of the property. The property now remains with the Department of Defence in its entirety. The property will be disposed of by the department, taking account of the market conditions, so as to maximise the return to the Defence Forces.”
Magee must therefore take its place in a long queue of assets for disposal. O’Donnell reckons it will take six to seven years before it is put on the market, by which point it will have lain idle for 20 years.
The implications for Mullingar are obvious. Down the road in Longford, adding salt to the wound, sources say the department is playing hardball with local authorities and is said to be seeking €1 million for Connolly barracks. The department says “part of Longford Barracks was disposed of to the VEC and Longford County Council has expressed an interest in acquiring the remainder of the barracks.” Discussions with the council are ongoing, it says.
On the upside, Tony O’Donnell says that where there was a clear plan for the closure of barracks, they turned out well. Devoy in Naas, for example, was redeveloped into county-council offices, a hotel and apartments. Monaghan is on the way to a fine education campus. But that was another era. Mullingar can only fight and hope.
